ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Xavier Zengue and Nick Firmino both scored early goals while Oliver Semmle made a key penalty save as Lexington SC took a 4-1 victory against the Tampa Bay Rowdies at Al Lang Stadium on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Lexington jumped in the lead in the 12th minute when Zengue capitalized after Braudilio Rodrigues won possession at the top of the Rowdies\u2019 penalty area, sending the ball into the path of the right back for a sharp low finish, and then doubled its advantage two minutes later when Phillip Goodrum was able to get in behind the Tampa Bay back line and draw the goalkeeper before setting up Firmino for a simple finish into the open net.<\/p>\n
The Rowdies had a chance to pull a goal back in the 37th minute when they were awarded a penalty kick for a handball on a shot by Louis Perez, but Semmle denied Russell Cicerone\u2019s shot to the left side. Seven minutes later, Marcus Epps made it three for the visitors as he cut inside from the left and sent a low shot to the bottom-right corner of the net.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay tried to find a way back into the game in the second half and had a pair of chances fall to Matheus Oliveira and MD Myers before the hour-mark with Oliveira\u2019s being saved and Myers missing the target. The Rowdies pulled a goal back with 12 minutes to go as Gino Vivi found the net with a low shot to the right corner, but the visitors wrapped up the victory with a fine long-range strike by Tarik Scott picked out the top-right corner of the net with four minutes to play.<\/p>\n
Takeaways <\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Rowdies \u2013 The hosts suffered their second defeat of the regular season after a slack opening 15 minutes that quickly put the side under pressure to respond to a two-goal deficit. Tampa Bay had enough chances to take something from the game, but Russell Cicerone\u2019s missed penalty kick and chances that were similarly denied early in the second half left too big of a hill to climb. <\/p>\n
Lexington SC \u2013 After taking victory against San Antonio FC last time out, Lexington put together another sharp display as they struck twice in the early going and then held firm as the second half progressed. Lexington has now won four of its last five league contests and is set up well for its showdown with Commonwealth Cup rival Louisville City in next weekend\u2019s Prinx Tires USL Cup group stage finale with Louisville City FC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Xavier Zengue and Nick Firmino both scored early goals while Oliver Semmle made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[115,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-329641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}